Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Getting a replacement Rattler

Day Eleven

I have a incoming C5, so before I check out my new static C4, I have a look at that. Hmm.. not much action, a lone tower and like 10 sigs to scan down. Better get to it, you never know, C5s get a lot of empire-K162s, maybe I get lucky and find a HS 2 jumps from Jita...

After a few minutes of scanning, I have found a EOL null sec and a EOL low sec, so I jump through the low sec to have a look. hmm.. Lamadent. 10j to Jita. Trough Rancer and Crielere... That's a possible route at least, I'm in a cloaky T3, it's early afternoon far from peek EU and US, and I'm feeling like a lucky punk. Lets go to Jita and build a Rattler! The WH might not be there when I going back, and I'm certainly not taking a Rattlesnake through Rancer, but having one ready in Jita is a good first step.

The trip there is uneventful, I buy a Rattler for 512M, rig it for 150M and get replacement mods for what did not drop. All T2 stuff, thankfully. This means that my systems crash cost me around 700M in assets and one night of plexing.

On the way back I learn something new about safe travel in low sec. I have stopped using frigs and shuttles for travelling in low sec since all it takes to ruin your day is a few smart bombs and a scout on the incoming gate. If you have implants it can get quite expensive as well. Of course you can warp to the outbound gate from an alternative angle, but that complicates things and makes the travel-time a lot longer. I prefer something that can warp cloaked, don't have to bother about bubbles in 0.0 and wont die to a few smart bombs. Hence my Tengu.

Now, warping cloaked is all well and good, forcing camps to rely on scouts on gates to know what and when something is coming. However, what you can do while warping from one gate to another in a system with a lot of folks in local and that are usually camped in one way or another (like Rancer!), is scan the gate you are warping to.

If you do that, and warping to the Crielere gate in Rancer, like I did, you will get a healthy heads up on what kind of camp they got waiting for you. So, for instance if you see, like I did, over 10 Rokhs on narrow scan on a gate you will be landing on, you can bet your faction scram that you will be landing right into a pipe-bomb. Which I did. What I for some reason did not do, was to act on the information in time. Seeing a smart-bombing gang on short, narrow scan, the right thing to do is probably to de-cloak and activate whatever hardeners you got. If I had, maybe I would not have had to dock and rep half my armour :)

As I flew my Tengu now they stripped all my 8k shields and half of the little armour I had. Way to close for comfort. Without hardeners and DC running my little Tengu only got 22k EHP with my standard scouting fit. With them running, it becomes over 30k. And if I had been really smart I would have used a travel-fit, sacrificing the tackle for more tank and a MWD for burning to gates. Then the EHP would have been the double.

Well, you learn all the time, and there's always something to improve upon. That's Eve. Besides, if I had used a shuttle or frig for the Rancer-crossing, I would have lost my pod and would have to do it all over again. That would have been a real drag.